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Writer Bio

Storytelling is a talent passed down through the generations in my family. It is a way of life in that the more you live, the better the story; the deeper the experience, the broader the plain to connect with readers. Just like life is about people so writing is about people - about their love, their loss, their triumphs, their failures, and their x ever after. I write to understand myself and make sense of life. I share my work in order to find others who can relate to my characters, or their lives, or the moral of the story.

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Thursday, November 10, 2011

I have a prologue and I have my first two chapters down. I'm on chapter 3 at the moment and it feels like I've only started picking up momentum now.

I met my MC, Haley, where she was leaving the principal's office after some incident (earlier that day she slipped and smacked her head into the floor and her sisters' friends laughed at her - Haley didn't appreciate that much so there was some teenage slapping going on), that had her suspended from school. On the drive home, her parents inform her that they're sending her to a special summer school a.k.a. Christian Bootcamp. Haley will have none of it and runs away. She decides to take the 'short cut' through their local reserve to avoid running into the authorities (or her parents) on the main road, but she stumbles upon a tunnel that seems to have appeared out of nowhere. Curiosity gets the better of her and she goes inside for a looksee, wacks her head against a rock wall (again, poor girl) but then the dark starts to make her paranoid (or maybe she's just smacked all the marbles out of her mind?) and she's 'chased' by whispers (yes I was listening to Skillet while writing that part).

She makes it out the other side of the tunnel, and follows a lonely road to a creepy house in the woods, where she steps into something that might have come out of Alice in Wonderland. Or not. It's pretty weird anyway. A blind boy tells her where she needs to go, and Haley, wondering if she is in Wonderland, follows his directions. She gets snatched into this underworld by a witch who wanted to use her for a spell to keep the cold from her house/hut/cave (there's clearly confusion between myself and my characters about what to call it), but then just as suddenly and inexplicably the witch lets her go again. Haley doesn't wonder why because nothing is making much sense to her, and she believes she'd knocked her head one too many times that day (whether she has or not I haven't decided yet). So Haley is let lose in this underworld but then! She's chased by a ginormous worm. And I mean this thing is huge, and I did not enjoy writing it because worms are just... ick and make my toes curl in disgust. Like frogs - with those soft, squishy bodies that only needs a little squeeze to make them.... Wait. I'm digressing. Where was I?

Oh, the ginormous worm chasing Haley. Right, so she runs off with this worm chasing her and suddenly this wolf comes out of nowhere (or I might have written about the wolf before, my memory's already foggy on the details) and starts chasing her, too. She manages to lose the worm, but the wolf keeps on her heels the whole time until she accidentally falls into a river of blood.

Of course she doesn't know right away that it's blood. Haley wiggles her way out of this river and tries to outrun this persistent wolf. She stumbles upon this small little town and goes into what appears to be a bar. The people in there are pretty creepy, in varying degrees. That's also when she realises she's covered in blood, whatnot with the light on her and all. So she goes to this tiny bathroom to try clean up, but this weirdo follows her. She dodges him but then the whole bar seems to have turned against her - and then she kind of really does lose her marbles.

Haley believes that she's in a coma of sorts and this is all just in her head.

I think I'm going to go with the first idea, but not the second. I'm contemplating bringing astral projection into the mix to explain some things. She's reincarnated at the end of the novel so I might as well.

So, Haley believes that this is all imaginary and that she's really in control, and she starts spewing some crazy smut at these people. But then, just as this weirdo guy grabs her, her hero arrives! Tararum!

But he's nothing what she had expected and she's disappointed. However, I'm pretty happy with how he's turned out, appearance wise anyway.

At the moment, he and Haley are having a bit of an argument. He's trying to explain to her that everything is real, and Haley is being very difficult. Not exactly how I'd pictured the first meeting between girl and guardian angel would go down, but hey, it beats cliche.

I have 22 days left to get 38,383 words written.

And aren't those numbers just funny? Like tomorrow is the 11th of the 11th of 2011. I'm going to make a wish at 11:11:11am tomorrow morning. And then again at 11:11:11pm, just for good measure.

Tuesday, November 01, 2011

I'm fairly sure that since midnight last night, just about everyone in my region has a word count higher than 0. Everyone except for me. It's lunchtime and that 0 is still there.

But you know what, I'm not going to sweat it this year. There's no pressure. It'd be nice if I could finally make the 50k, of course, but I'm not going to lose sleep, weight and a social life because of it. So on my agenda for the day - shopping!